12/04/2009

The final round of items up for auction to support the Interstitial Arts Foundation will have an extended run through Monday, instead of ending on Friday. It's a Chriskwansolstikkah miracle!

This gives you a chance for more handcrafted holiday shopping, with all of the proceeds going for a good nonprofit cause. Go forth and look at the jewelry, art boxes and clothing, then bid on whatever strikes the fancy of you or someone you <heart>! There are several lovely pieces on deck.

My offering has new pictures, modeled by IF2 contributor Alaya Dawn Johnson, showing off the purple satin lining, the back, and pretty much everything I didn't in my snapshot because I suck. If I might brag about the back? It took me THREE DAYS to almost perfectly line up the veins into neat chevrons. I think the official term for that is Type-A Obsessive. Man, I loved working with the cloth that serves as base for this skirt. My crack dealers told me last summer that it's no longer manufactured (that they know of) so

If you go after my piece and win, you need to read this post. Also, due to a gift brought by a guest during Thanksgiving festivities I encourage you to let me do your buttonhole, because I'm gonna change the tie a little bit. The Fabulous I was given fits the Berry Moon skirt perfectly! Please note that you do not have to let me do the buttonhole. You can do your own and that's cool, too.

12/02/2009

Bidding for the skirt I made in support of the Interstitial Arts Foundation fundraiser closes this Friday, Dec. 4th at 3:54 p.m. EST/12:54 p.m. Pacific. Consider this your two-day warning!

Because it's a wrap, the skirt can fit up to three size ranges. Its length is 29 inches from the natural waist. On me (about 5' 6'', generally about 150 lbs, sadly with much less ass than I had before I started seriously doing yoga several years ago***) that comes to about mid-calf.

Click here if you want in, or just spread the word if you are so inclined. It has one bid already! I'm so pleased. If you're interested in this skirt, you need to read this post. Due to fabulous sparkly items given to me over the holiday break by one of the guests, if you decide to have me do your buttonhole I'm gonna go ahead and slightly alter the tie to incorporate the new fabulousness.

What I like about auctions, particularly those run for nonprofits, is that everyday people such as ourselves have a chance to snag something for far less than it would go for retail. People who know what they're doing - as the IAF people have demonstrated over the past two years - set the opening bid below what they know the retail sales price to be. This is a deliberate attempt to lure in the Power Shoppers. This is Standard Operating Procedure for an auction. There is never a guarantee that the threshold point will be hit, which is why auction fundraisers can be risky for an organization, particularly during times of General Economic Woe.

Tip: if you ever hear a complaint of omgthisispricedtoolow? That person has no clue *at all* about the Big Picture technicals of running this type of auction. Because I do thanks to several years of observing the killer development team at the nonprofit day job *and* the nonprofit day jobs of my friends, I am highly impressed with what the volunteer IAF team has pulled off. It's because of what I saw them do in 2008 (I found out about it too late to contribute because I don't move in those circles) that I made a point of keeping an eye out to see if I could contribute something to the cause for 2009.

11/11/2009

It looks like the organizers used my quick snapshot for the photo instead of a studio shot as was taken for all of the other pieces,*** which makes life easier for anyone interested in it because you already know what it looks like! My piece is on deck starting Nov. 27. Full auction schedule, including links to the main site here. There's some really gorgeous stuff up for a good cause, so take a look and spread the word!

*** One person will read that, fall out of his chair laughing, and then laugh some more, and then send me a heh heh heh text. But he will still be wrong. NO! WRONG! <lalalalalalala>

And if you've got your eye on a specific item, and you want to know when it goes live on deck so you can Strike, but for whatever reasons of your own you do not want to sign up for the RSS feed that updates when new items post? There's a possibility I know the schedule. Ask away.

Update! Behold the schedule provided by the hard-working volunteer admins:

11/01/2009

This is a fundraiser for the IAF. Artist and crafty types created works based on short stories in the upcoming anthology. Based on the preview images, people threw down some gorgeous, interesting work! If I had any free moolah at all, there are at least two pieces I'd bid on!

They're doing this by rolling out one piece at a time from now through early December. I don't know when my piece will be on deck, but if you go to the auction page and sign up for alerts, you'll get a notification as each new piece goes up.

Build notes for my contribution are here. My source material is the story "Berry Moon" by writer Camilla Bruce. Here is what my piece, a quilted wrap skirt, looks like:

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE SKIRT: It comes with a spool of purple thread so the winner can make their own button hole for the tie. Because the skirt can fit three size ranges, and I have no idea of the size of who might snag it, I didn't want to limit by making the buttonhole ahead of time. HOWEVER, if the winner prefers not to make their own buttonhole, I will do it for them! How that will work:

When you get the skirt from IAF, put it on and mark where you want the buttonhole to be.

Send me an email via the handy addy provided over there on the side. In that email you will provide your snail addy.

I will send you a postage paid mailer. You will put the skirt in there and drop it in the mail.

As soon as it gets into Moi hands, I will make your buttonhole and send it back.

10/06/2009

Normally when I incorporate quilting into the design of a piece of clothing intended for everyday wear, I do the quilting directly on the shell - in this case the body of the skirt. In other words, the skirt itself serves as backing for the batting and the quilt top. But because the shell of this skirt is an extremely open weave, that wouldn't be possible. The three layers of the quilted strip for this project this had to be built and shrunk separately, then attached to the shell.

Earlier I talked about what I wanted to pop on this, and why. So for its quilting I followed the outlines of the Stage 1 flowers and the Stage 2 connecting channels. This is what the final result looked like (flipped onto the backing so you can see it clearly).

Purple thread was used for the piece, something else that's pretty obvious only from looking at the backing. What's uber-cool is when you look at the final result from the top you think I used two different threads to quilt, because sometimes the thread it looks like it's red and sometimes it looks purple. Looking at it, you might have the reaction of o my goodness how she must have suffered quilting this thing with two different threads and be all impressed.

(That reaction has actually happened to me many times, universally from people who do not sew. Depending on who is saying it and what kind of mood I'm in at the time, I let them believe what they want. Exceptions are a kid or an excited newbie sewing person. Them I'll immediately drop with the explainer. So if you're reading this and you are not a kid or an excited newbie sewing person? DO NOT READ THE PARAGRAPH ABOVE THIS ONE, OR THIS PARAGRAPH, OR THE ONE IMMEDIATELY BELOW. YOU NEVER SAW THIS ENTRY.)

What's actually going on there with the fluxing thread is a common optical illusion anybody who sews knows about. Your thread appears to change color depending on the background. That's the reason you're often told to choose a thread lighter than your background, so it will be invisible. But if you don't want invisible thread for your quilting (! boring !) and you want to add another small but fairly significant element to your final piece, you take your swatches to wherever it is you get your thread and lay a bit of the thread you're thinking of using over each swatch. You will instantly see what I'm taking way too many words here to describe. The thread that changes the most against each individual background swatch? That's your guy.

Okay! The super shrinky thing. Think I said this already, but in case not, I
like texture best, and loooove the nubblies that come once a quilted item has been shrunk. No matter what you use for your batting it's gonna shrink a bit...the batting is going to force your top inward into the whole. You need to factor that into your design. Different batting shrinks at different rates. You'll need to experiment. Natural batting shrinks more than man-made batting.

Because I have a feel for how much the fantabulous Warm & Natural brand of batting shrinks - ! lots ! which is one of the reasons I use it - I pin to capture the shrink effect down the road. When I
pin the top of whatever I'm making down on the batting & backing, I stretch it out as much as possible before stitching, and sometimes I will create false folds or nits in the top in hopes of creating extra nubbly.

Anywho, off it goes to the 24-hour drug dealer laundry, to be twice washed and twice dried at super hot. Super hot in order to get super shrinky. Though it is quite probable that two cycles are not necessary to get super shrinky, I convinced myself otherwise so long ago that this is what I do. I get a lot of reading done at the laundry.

Back home, iron, slash it into the final shape needed for the binding. Even though this is something to be worn and not an actual quilt, you still need to square it off and bind it. I didn't take any pictures during this stage because the slashing is traumatic - doubly so in this case due to the deadline. If you and your rotary fuck up during this stage the result is tears and solace in a big mug of Whaler's. The stories I could tell about how many of my early projects were ruined when it came time to square off. All that drama even though binding is just boring, actually.

For this project the binding was done on machine as opposed to by hand as usual. But truth be told, no matter how you do binding? It's boring. Not to mention traumatic.

Here's up close after slashing to square off, while in the midst of binding. You can see a bit of the super shrinky effect going on. (Compare to the picture above to get an idea of how much you have to quilt of the piece, even knowing you're going to slash it away. The base was 3 flowers wide. The final strip for use is 1.5 flowers wide.) When you see the final piece it will make sense why I bound this in two radically different types of cloth:

Here's up close attaching the piece to the shell. The edge on the bottom of the image also serves as final trim for that entire side of the skirt. Was that hell? Yes. Yes it was. Measure 20 times, cut once:

The blood cloth used as trim was also an extreme open weave. That cloth is also used for the waist and the hem. For the hem what I wanted to do was force the cream cloth of the shell through the loose weave of the blood cloth, thus creating random bits of cream breaking through the blood all around the whole hem. I was only partially successful in that.

Next and (to the relief of some) final entry in this series - why I decided to make a skirt in support of the Interstitial Arts Foundation auction, even though I remain vague on what exactly interstitial means, exactly.

In that post you will be given a link to images of the final skirt, which only three four people have seen so far. I think the IAF pictures are going to better than mine, so I'd rather wait for their hard-working volunteers to do the grunt work and take nice pictures for the auction page that I can just link to.

The IAF auction goes live in November. If you like what you've seen here so far in these series of build notes, take a look when the auction launches and buy it from them. All proceeds from its sale goes to the IAF. Like all of the other creator types supporting this effort, my contribution was created as a volunteer.

Let's end with a picture of Cuddle Kitty getting all up in my way during the quilting stage:

There's a reason all textile ingredient lists around here include the words And Cat Hair.

Note! The final product was run through the wash cycle one more time and taken immediately from there to the post office. So if you have extreme cat allergies, shouldn't be a problem.

09/25/2009

And now it's time to get to the actual quilting part! As per tradition, that's done to My Dinner With Andre, one of my all-time favorite movies, and perfect for a quilting session. I think I've turned it into other people's fave movie, considering how I'm on my third Criterion version due to people 'borrowing' it and never bringing it back. I no longer loan out My Dinner With Andre dvd to anyone under any circumstances.

First lay down your backing. Because the skirt is now much shorter than originally planned, the backing is not canvas as that would make it too heavy. Also, since in this case the backing will not be seen, it's a perfect opportunity to use some leftover pink stuff I'm trying to get rid of:

Then lay down your Warm & Natural batting. Both of these items are cut larger than the piece being quilted. I like this batting because it has no additives and it's super shrinky! That'll make sense later.

Next, lay down the strip, centering it as much as possible. For this piece I added a ball of polyfill where the center of each flower will hit.

Why? Because what's really cool about the cloth used for the centers, besides it being hand woven and dyed by a women's collective in Ghana, is each napkin has different near-invisible designs woven in. Usually when I cut this stuff I can never preserve the design. This time I cut each of those hexes with an eye toward capturing a bit of that design:

So instead of poofing the entire flower (to emphasize the flower), I decided to poof just the center of each flower (in hopes of highlighting the patterns). Truth be told, I can see it, but I'm kinda obsessed. I don't know if other people will notice.

Then you seriously pin it all down:

Once it's all pinned you go load up the dvd. At this moment Cuddle Kitty will teleport from wherever the hell he was and plant himself right in the most inconvenient place possible:

In case you care - and some people do for reasons of their own that I acknowledge but do not understand - this piece I'm not hand quilting. I'm doing it all on Fredi. Hand quilting will take entirely too long and cause me to miss the deadline. Also my hand quilting is still kind of loose even after all these years, and I need a really tight stitch to get the super shrinky effect that I love so much.

Next entry, the quilting is done! Time to mount it on the shell!

(I might hand quilt Mom's though. Mom, being one of the three people who has seen the completed skirt, immediately demanded her own and sent her measurements to make it clear that she Means It. I'm still tickled by that, not to mention thrilled! I've been trying to get measurements out of The Official Mom of BGF Central for years, even asking My Dad The Hero to help. He responded with I have no intentions of dying before I have to.)

09/21/2009

So, we last left our Intrepid Heroine as she was happily assembling the completed blocks into two chains. One to run down the front of the skirt, the other to provide the bottom border. Purple flowers for one, blood flowers for the other, borders reversed depending on flower color.

Ms. Classy, though now relocated thousands of miles from here I'll have you know, had been bossily advocating for a while that the skirt be standard length. I ignored her because I like floor length skirts. Also, my design was predicated on floor length; the side and bottom strips work mainly because the expanse of the skirt give the eye a nice rest. If it were shorter, the whole thing would be entirely too crowded.

But she made a really smart point that since this skirt is not intended for me, nor is it a costume, it really should be of a length that normal people might find appealing. I <eye rolled> for a while before realizing her point was not entirely wrong.

This meant that not only did I have to chop off a good chunk of the shell, but I suddenly had a whole bunch of flowers and hundreds of two-tone hexagons that were not needed. Making this change meant only the front strip would be needed. Ack! All that prep work!

But nothing left but to get to it. Murder your darlings, as they say.

So! First I carefully chopped down the shell. I think it was alarmed, since it had been sitting ignored on the dress form for weeks. Then I began altering the strip.

We started with this (but longer, because I didn't take pictures of the chain beyond the first joining):

The original plan called for the empty spaces to be filled with individual purple hexes. But under this adaptation I decided to fill the gaps with some of the now-extra purple flowers.

And so forth until, finally, the strip is done:

Now I'd have to come up with something else for the bottom border. That I decided to figure out later, because now it was time for poofing and quilting! Which I will share with you next entry.

Reminder: These build notes on the IFA wrap skirt go up well after whatever I'm talking about has been done. It is not a real-time report. How not real-time? Three people have seen the completed item, which is already in the mail! So, yeah. SERIOUSLY not real time.

09/12/2009

Sort of. I didn't take as many pictures for this stage as I should have. But these two will give you the general idea.

You have the flower. Attach the stage 2 hexes around the flower to create the actual block. Whenever you make a perfect join, as demonstrated in the far right corner below, brag because that hardly ever happens.

Once you have two completed blocks, connect them!

Repeat for every flower and block until done.

And just when everything is going fine, Ms. Classy will Intervene. We'll talk about that later.